


forward, into something heady and new

by astrogeny



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/F, Officers Academy AU, Slow Dancing, Three Houses AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 21:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20645702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrogeny/pseuds/astrogeny
Summary: Her feet move with a nervous urge to keep Celica's pace, which is slightly out of tempo with the song--Celica dances like she means to pull Faye forward into something heady and new. Faye knows she can slow them down, even if she's not leading, but instead, she tries matching some of Celica's forward-facing fervor. It's giddy and frightening, like the first time she left the ground behind on a pegasus' back.





	forward, into something heady and new

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a 500 word drabble for a fayelica + slow-dancing prompt, and then it ballooned into......This. i'm still not 100% sure the execution lives up to the concept in my head, but i think i've hammered at it enough, so here's a fayelica 3h au, featuring lots of navelgazing about faye clinging to an idealized image of her past, and also to the notion that she's straight lmao faye is as tricky a narrator as the last time i wrote her, because i feel like she has so much mercurial turmoil going on beneath the Muh Alm stuff that dominates most of her screentime. i think her following alm to war and it being a Whole Mess translates well to the same scenario with the officers academy, except she'd hopefully get exposure to other peers and mentors who could help her pull herself out of her rut? in any event, for the sake of this fic, she's in golden deer (headed by alm), while celica is the head of the black eagles.

Because she's trying to be a better friend, Faye dances with Tobin first. He spends most of the song steering them jerkily into Gray's line of sight, getting ignored, trying to act like it's that blonde girl's attention he wants, and holding Faye's hand too tight against his sweaty palm. Faye can't pity him, because that seems too much like pitying herself. Then Gray wants to dance with her, not with Tobin, and that cruel little irony just seems to be the way of the world--everybody getting what someone else wants. As he dips her, he casually (loudly) reminds the whole ballroom that he's dancing with this year's White Heron Cup winner, and Faye's immediately bombarded by dance offers from people she's never even spoken to before. 

She rifles about inside herself for the curt refusals she usually has at the ready, and comes up empty. So, she dances with a string of strangers whose pleasantries make her feel somewhere outside herself. She should be proud that she'll be a part of Garreg Mach forever--her name is already stamped into a tiny brass plaque, nailed below a straight, unending row of other names that mean nothing to her. She wants to run to the room where her winner's plaque hangs, rip it off the wall, and take back that piece of herself. She wants to carry it home to Ram and hold it inside herself until the flesh grows back around it, until she can pretend she's never left the past to experience her own future. 

Thankfully, her novelty is fleeting. Faye is allowed to return to her status as a nobody from the countryside with no name or great talent to recommend her. Her plainness is a mantle, one she can pull over herself as she slinks along the periphery to make her exit. From the doors, Faye casts one last look back at the bright expanse of the ballroom, a scene that doesn't feel any less complete in her absence. She keeps Alm out of her line of sight, swallowing half-desiccated dreams back down into her gut like bile. She owes him his space. 

Outside, it feels unseasonably hot, though Faye knows it's just because the warmth of company is an unfamiliar weight against her skin. She wanders the grounds in a way that only looks aimless, half-heartedly admiring the flower beds hardy enough to face winter outside the greenhouse's comforting constancy. 

From the unsettling dark of the hedge maze, a rustle--Faye turns, rabbit-alert. 

"Oh! Faye!" Celica's rounded the corner, lips parted in surprise, hand to her heart. The sparse torchlight combines with the latticed, glowing specters of the ballroom window to cast a corona around her edges. "You startled me." 

"I was just standing here." The way Faye's words fall from her mouth is muddy and churlish. She wishes she could scoop them back up in her palms to cast them out again, letting them settle a little lighter. 

"True--I just hadn't expected to see anyone else out here tonight." Celica strides over, her poise resettled in such a natural way. 

"If anyone'd be at the ball all night, I'd've thought it'd be you," Faye says. It comes out softer--Celica makes it easier to be soft. "Don't the House leaders have to dance with everyone in their own House?" 

"It's not required," in a tone that suggests Celica absolutely did it anyways. "You're right, I should have stayed, but I'd wanted to go to the Goddess Tower--" 

\--and envy coils its acrid way through Faye's arteries to eat at the chambers of her heart, because there's only one thing anyone would go to the Goddess Tower for tonight-- 

"--unfortunately for me, I'd forgotten about that silly legend, and I found... well, let's just say I wish I hadn't seen it. If nothing else, it was the most uncomfortable discipline case I've had to handle in my time as House leader." 

Faye laughs at the image of Celica scolding some unfortunate couple, and the laugh assuages her fears to spare her from confronting them. They bleed away in waves: that Celica was going to the Goddess Tower. That Celica was going to the Goddess Tower to meet Alm. That she felt jealous of _Alm_ in that scenario, not Celica. 

"Do you think you'll go back now?" Faye hurries to ask, to get herself back on track. "To the ball, that is." 

"I should," Celica says, making no move to do so. "Though I don't know who's left for me to dance with, and..." Celica's lips twist. She's weighing whether or not to wrest some thread of fallibility from the iron grip she holds it back in, to offer it to Faye as a fragile link between them. "...It'd be strange to dance with someone twice. Like I'm playing favorites." 

"Then dance with me," Faye blurts. Celica's eyes widen, enough that the flickering of the torches seems to burn higher in them. 

"Do you really want me to? That is, you aren't just offering because I was sounding sorry for myself, are you?" 

"No," Faye replies, calmer than she feels. Belatedly, she realizes Celica'd asked more than one question, and hastens to clarify, "No to the just offering bit, yes to the really wanting to bit." 

"Let's wait for the next song, then." 

It's that easy? It can't be that easy. Faye doesn't know what she's expecting instead, just that it isn't Celica's acceptance. 

In the cold, still air, they can still hear music trickling across the achingly clear night sky. It's not enough of a balm to make the silence feel less awkward. 

"It's funny, that we should run into each other out here by the flowers," Celica says in a low voice. "I remember you used to love flowers." Inside that statement are questions: Do you still? Is this nostalgic connection enough? Faye wouldn't say she _loves_ flowers, but they're an easy first step--a simple trait she can wear on her tremulous surface, as she might wear her braids or uniform. 

"I still like them, yeah. Your favorites used to be... Edelweiss, right?" The memory comes to Faye as a washed-out flash of color: Celica with white flowers nestled in her curls. 

"They are! And still are, really. As for you," Celica begins, eyes casting around for a flower that might jog her own memory, "Daisies?" 

"Uh-huh! Though they're basically the same as edelweiss--one's just fancier than the other." 

"Are they really? I hadn't known." 

Faye wracks her brain for something else clever and impressive to say about flowers. Something that will make Celica say, _Oh, I've missed you so much_. If there's an aim to idle conversation beyond earning those scraps of validation, Faye can't yet grasp what it might be. Her own merits, whatever they are, aren't enough to make her worth talking to. And Celica _is_ someone Faye actually wants to talk to, even across the distances between their Houses and their roles. She's not the same person she was seven, nearly eight years ago, and neither is Faye (though not for a lack of trying). Yet, Faye feels like there's some kind of undercurrent nipping at her heels, coaxing her towards Celica, and she's willing to let it guide her instead of fighting every step of the way. 

At least Celica seems to be at a loss for words, too. It makes her feel less like some unattainable ideal. She even sighs a little in relief when the opening strains of a new song waft out in their direction. Faye just hopes it's more of a "finally, I can't wait any longer for this dance" sigh than a "let's get this over with so that I can pray or sleep or whatever I do when I'm alone" sigh. 

The song is a slow, emotive devotional, which wouldn't be Faye's first pick for a ballroom dance. It's called "The Heritors of Dawn" or something, she thinks. 

"Shall we?" Celica asks. Faye starts. They've missed half the first verse, and her mind is scrambling through the accompanying dance to find the right place for her body to catch up. 

"At the chorus? Sorry, we missed a bunch because I got distracted." She's making a hash of this dance before it's even begun, all while not even knowing why she wants it enough to ask for it. But Celica nods in agreement, then she's so close that Faye can see her breath condensing in the cold air, cloudlike, as it leaves her mouth. 

Celica leads. It feels so natural that Faye forgets her own plans to guide Celica through the dance, simple as the steps are. 

A shiver ripples down Faye's spine, feverish. She finds herself thinking of Tobin's sweaty hands, for some reason. She hadn't allowed herself to pity Tobin for his lovelorn plight, but she can certainly sympathize with him, all of a sudden. Celica doesn't have sweaty hands, though she's also wearing gloves, so it's not really a fair comparison. It just isn't fair to compare her to boys in general, yet they're the only frame of reference Faye has for--what? Friendship? Closeness? Feeling like her own skin fits on her for once? Faye digs through her memories in search of proof that all girls have hands that feel like the aftermath of a lightning strike on her body, that this is totally normal and not a phenomenon unique to Celica. She comes up short, her only point of comparison being herself. Maybe she's been thinking of herself as the only girl in the world in a concentrated effort to avoid thinking about other girls at all. 

"I can see why you won the White Heron Cup," Celica remarks. She sounds sincere, even a bit shy in offering up the compliment. "You dance so naturally." 

"You think so? This dance isn't anything special." Faye's vaguely aware that she's wrinkling her nose, as she does when she's unimpressed with herself. It isn't the most flattering face to show Celica. "Honestly, I thought someone made me our House's representative as a prank." 

Celica turns Faye a little harder than such a slow dance requires, and her heart goes freewheeling against her sternum with unabashed abandon. 

"Nonsense," insists Celica. She also sounds slightly breathless from the unexpected, emphatic movement. "You really were impressive. I should've congratulated you right away, but... Well, here are my congratulations now, such as they may be." 

Faye tries to shrug without upsetting the careful conjoining of their arms. 

"It's fine. Besides, that boy who was your House's representative is your friend, right? So I understand why you wouldn't want to make a fuss over me and rub it in his face." Which is a stupid thing to say, when Faye is very much enjoying Celica's undivided attention. 

"Boey? I don't think his feelings would be hurt, seeing as he wasn't terribly keen on competing in the first place. If anyone was nominated as a gaffe, I could believe that was a deciding factor for Professor Saber in choosing Boey." She says it like she's recalling some kind of inside joke, savoring it in the way of candy melting on her tongue. Faye has no way of knowing what fondness Celica has attached to the memory, when she can scarcely dredge up anything that stands out from nearly a year's worth of going through the motions for anyone's sake but her own. 

"Well, no one was more surprised than me that I won," Faye insists. 

Her feet move with a nervous urge to keep Celica's pace, which is slightly out of tempo with the song--Celica dances like she means to pull Faye forward, into something heady and new. Faye knows she can slow them down, even if she's not leading, but instead, she tries matching some of Celica's forward-facing fervor. It's giddy and frightening, like the first time she left the ground behind on a pegasus' back. 

"You deserved it," Celica says firmly. 

It might be the dizzying magnitude of Celica's faith directed at her that gives Faye the courage to lean into Celica when they make another turn. There's supposed to be space between them (enough for the Goddess, Gray would say, jokingly pantomiming a scolding monk), but Celica's had them at a stiff distance. It's enough that Faye's arm has to be almost fully extended for her hand to rest on Celica's shoulder. Now, she has enough slack that she could wrap her arm around Celica's neck, as their feet dart in and out of each other's paths like minnows. 

"Oh," breathes Celica. 

"Is this okay?" Faye asks quickly. Her fear of overstepping grapples with her desire to be closer to Celica, to let Celica grow closer to her. 

"It is," and a smile blooms up the trellis of her lips until it reaches her eyes and sets them alight. Faye wants to smile back. She wants to throw her arms around Celica and abandon the calculated measures of the dance to spin her around like they're children again. She wants to kiss her. She wants, she wants, she wants, as the song wanes into polite applause from the ballroom and they keep on dancing, making up for lost time. 

"I don't want to go back," Celica admits. She nestles the side of her head against Faye's. Her hair is a soft pressure against Faye's temple, a few curls spiraling down to tickle against her wind-flushed cheek. 

And Faye tries to let herself entertain the idea, in more ways in one, when she says, 

"I don't want to go back, either." 


End file.
